Intimacy and Transparency

The Divine Mother at the Union and Reunion Gathering at Lake Tahoe challenged us to take up the task of creating intimacy in the world. Intimacy is essential for sacred partnership. Without it, we exist in two solitudes.

Intimacy consists of personal transparency in sharing plus dedicated and active reception in listening. Today I’d like to look at transparency.

Let me give you an example of what is not intimate in communication. I was in a relationship once with a woman who would get tired at a party, say nothing, and then shame me later because she “had to” be at the party for an hour longer than she wanted and I didn’t notice that she wanted to leave.

When I asked her why she didn’t say anything about the matter, she’d respond that I should “just know” where she was at and implied that I was insensitive in not being able to read her mind.

Archangel Michael once called this position “passive aggressive,” less visible than active aggressive. (1)

I’d say that the whole science of communication is based on the premise that it’s potentially or actually unworkable to assume that another person should just know where we’re at.

The Growth Movement is about taking personal responsibility for our condition and well-being, communicating what we want and hearing what other people want.

A very desirable place to end up is communicating in such a way that we become, as far as is prudent in a world still marred by corrupt public officials, etc., transparent.

You’ve heard it said that telling the truth eliminates the need to remember, right? It certainly eliminates the need to keep one’s story straight. It also eliminates the need to polish one’s image, to manipulate others, to strategize, plot, plan, and so on.

You’ve also heard it said: what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to decieve. Deception takes work at every step; transparency takes no work. It’s economical of energy.

We simply say what’s there for us right here and right now.

In the world we’re headed for, we’ll be able to see everything about another person through several means: (1) we’ll be able to read their auras and (2) we’ll be able to hear or see their thoughts. In the Fifth-Dimensional world and higher, “thoughts are things.”

Remember what the Arcturians told the members of Sue Lie’s Multidimensional Leaders workshop? What we call “imagination” in the Third Dimension they call “creative thought” in the Fifth. (2) What we think there appears.

So why not get a head start on the way of life that’s coming down the pike and be transparently truthful?

I can tell you that practising transparency increases the amount of bliss you feel in your life. Practicing opacity – being guarded, playing it safe, dissimulating, being excessively and inappropriately diplomatic, etc. – ties us up in knots, with all the disbenefits that arise then.

The more tension we place in our bodies by lying or hiding and creating muscular holding patterns (what Eckhart Tolle calls “the pain body”), (3) the lower our awareness goes. The lower our awareness goes, the more bestial, lethargic and vulgar we become (Hindus call this state thamasic).

Awareness is an attribute of God, along with love, bliss, joy, and sentient existence. The more we hide and make things up, the deeper into the illusion we go.

Transparency is the answer to hiding, dissimulating, lowering our awareness, etc. Practising transparency in a thorough-going manner leads to squeaky-clean integrity and is a wonderful state. It’s also our native state in the Fifth Dimension.

Hey, how easy is it to say “I perpetrated against you” or “I gossiped about you” or “I cursed you to my parents”? It can be very tough but once over we experience such relief. est Trainer Randy McNamara once said that “it takes an instant to tell the truth and it’s like cutting yourself off at the knees.” (4)

There can be terrific momentary pain when acknowledging the truth and the action can seem counter-intuitive. But then one is free of the penalties and baggage of hiding and lying.

Back in 1981, Randy followed that comment with this one: “The real power comes when you call yourself on yourself.” (5) In the Growth Movement, it was one thing to allow others to call you on your numbers. But it was a whole other plateau to call yourself.

If people were willing to call themselves first, rather than waiting to be called, they became truly independent of the external moral apparatus and a totally-responsible person.

Psychologist John Enright described what happens when we raise our rackets, acts, and numbers to awareness, in a manner that’s very close to Randy’s observation: “Unawareness leads to momentary relief and continuing pain; awareness leads to momentary pain and continuing relief.” (6)

Transparency means to let others know us deeply, truly as we are. (7) It means to stand “etherically naked,” as Archangel Michael said. (8) Plotinus described the work of freeing oneself from the stone of one’s self-image, constructed self, machinations, strategies, etc.:

“Do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smooths it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too. Cut away all that is excessive. straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease ‘working at the statue’ until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue.” (9)

What results from freeing one’s spirit from the block of dissimulation and image management, he described here:

“Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever immeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself.

“Be of good heart. Remaining here, you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see.” (10)

The chipping away at the statue could be called emergence from the constructed self, the image we’ve cultivated that stands in for ourselves, the bands of muscular tension or holding patterns that keep our awareness low, our vasanas, core issues and false grids. Polishing the statue, for me, means becoming transparent in our communication.

There’s much, much more to say about transparency but it’d be best to stop here for today.